THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I think the meaning of the phrase “The Verducci Effect” is actually migrating from the original intended meaning: “Year After Effect for young pitchers who were overworked” to something along the lines of…

“The reaction from the Saber community when a writer continues to push a theory in the face of empirical evidence, failing to engage in any sort dialogue and utterly ignoring all information contrary to his opinion.”

I look forward to using “The Verducci Effect” in its new context.

+1

@1 Should writers prone to make those kind of statements be called “Verduccians” or is there another writer out there more deserving to lead this literary tendency?

Not a single Nicole Scherzinger fan amongst you?

Here’s a thought about the general Sabr community bashing of the so-called Verducci effect; have you guys ever considered that his article may not actually be meant to be a be-all, end-all statistical proof of his theory? 

I read the fangraphs rebuttal listed here and it makes complete sense; when comparing those listed by Verducci versus the “control” group (though I would quibble that i’d like to have seen his work in this case, actually seen the control group he selected) there was no effect. 

But, what’s missing is this; isn’t it implied that, if there’s pitchers out there who Verducci doesn’t include in his articles, then there’s a reason he doesn’t mention them?  Perhaps Verducci’s article is really just something along the lines of this statement: “each year I come up with a list of pitchers who, based on this rule of thumb, may be at risk.” It doesn’t say, “here’s a canonical list of every pitcher who qualifies for my rule of thumb and how they did.”

The distinction is that Verducci is already down-selecting the list of pitchers to study based on his opinion as a baseball writer.  So his study is really just a study of his opinion as stated year to year.  I don’t perceive he’s ever passed this off as a heavy duty statistical analysis. 

Just a thought.

Verducci’s opinion is this: